1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system having a host apparatus and a printing apparatus, wherein error information of the printing apparatus is displayed by the host apparatus, and a method of displaying error information of a printing apparatus by a host apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a printing system having a host apparatus, such as a computer, and a printing apparatus, in order to print an image produced by the host apparatus, the host apparatus generates print data corresponding to the image by using a page description language, and sends it to the printing apparatus.
Further, the printing apparatus receives the print data, analyzes the print data by using an emulation program or an interpreter program, and converts (expands) the print data into bitmap data in a page memory. Then, the printing apparatus outputs the bitmap data to a print engine to print the image.
However, if it happens to be short of memory space while an expanding process (converting process) is carried out in the printing apparatus, the image may not be normally printed. If there is an error or mistake included in the print data sent from the host apparatus, the expanding process may not be normally carried out. Furthermore, if there is an error or a bug included in the emulation program itself, the expanding process may not be normally carried out too.
In order to cope with the shortage of memory space, the memory device may be added in the printing apparatus. In case that the addition of the hardware is impossible, the quantity of the print data needs to be reduced.
In order to cope with the error included in the print data, the print data needs to be reconsidered and changed.
Furthermore, in order to cope with the error included in the emulation program, the print data needs to be changed so as to not hit the error part of the emulation program.
Here, when such an error actually happens in the printing system, an error message is displayed on a display panel of a manipulating portion installed in the printing apparatus. Further, the error message is sent to the host apparatus, and displayed by the host apparatus.
However, in such a way, a user of the printing system cannot easily understand the state of the error. Namely, a user cannot easily judge whether the cause of the error is the shortage of the memory space, mistake of the print data, a bug of the emulation program, or the like.
On the other hand, the method that an image is print out when the error happens is proposed. When the error happens, if a user can see the printed image, the user judged the state of the error on the basis of the condition of the printed image.
However, in this method, a user feels inconvenience in case that the printing apparatus is put at a place far from the host computer. Because the user has to move from the place of the host apparatus to the place of the printing in order to see the image printed out by the printing apparatus, for each time the error happens.
Moreover, in this method, when the error happens at the stage of the printing process, an image is not printed, so that a user cannot obtain the image. Therefore, the user cannot understand whether or not the error happens and cannot understand the state of error.